John Miller's "Matinee Mitt" (June 20) missed one important point: No one from the Republican party gets the go-ahead without the blessing of the U.S. gun lobby. Gun-owners in Massachusetts are an increasingly endangered species, as evidenced by decreasing numbers of hunting licenses as well as failures to renew handgun licenses and federal firearms-identification cards.

Romney is a liberal when it comes to defending the Second Amendment. His rhetoric sounds reasonable to the average citizen, with its support for background checks and closing gun-show "loopholes." During his time in office he has been happy to have the Massachusetts legislature do his bidding so he doesn't get his hands dirty on the matter.

When the NRAand the Gun Owners of America get to work on Romney, the matinee will have a short run.

It all started about a year and a half ago. Sam, Travis, and Trevor had been talking about creating their dream game while developing Savage. The idea: an epic fantasy FPS. “Most first-person shooters these days are based in World War II,” says McGrath. “Don’t get me wrong, they are fun, but we haven’t seen a fantasy game that isn’t an RPG since Heretic and Hexen.”

Then you have Ubisoft’s upcoming Dark Messiah: Might and Magic. Currently in development using Valve’s Source engine, that game will also allow you to hack, slash, and spell-sling in the first person. The question now becomes, how will a new intellectual property compare to a known franchise?

A big focus for Offset is to create a massive universe and an immersive story. “We’ve been inspired by Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty, which have just amazing single-player scenarios,” says McGrath. The plan involves adding a few RPG elements, such as being able to upgrade weapons and choose different character classes to play through the game.

The best way to describe the epic nature of multiplayer is by providing an example. The two teams, good and evil, play very different games. The objective of the evil team during a castle siege is to break down the castle walls with siege weapons and slaughter the innocent NPC women and children inside. The good side will need to hold the castle and light the beacons, waiting for reinforcements to arrive.